David Graeber talk in Edinburgh

David Graeber, anarchist former lecturer at Yale Uni in the US, came to Edinburgh yesterday to talk about the G8. Well, that was the plan. In the end it was just Q&A and an extensive break. AK Press hosted the event, which was a good get together, but a bit disappointing as David hadn’t prepared a talk, and is in my opinion not a particularly good speaker as he did not manage to keep the attention of people. He did answer the questions very generally and seemed to be more keen to have a general discussion and hang out with people, which is fair enough. Also, there are a lot of “Aehms” and a bit of nasal tone in his voice. Unfortunately, he did not go into details about why he was fired/unemployed from the university. AK Press asked a good question, drawing the connections to the recent case of Ward Churchill getting fired from his university job, asking if there would be a recent purge of anarchist and radical libertarian academics from teaching jobs.
J., the moderator asked for a 15 minute silent contemplation at the start of the event, as we were meeting in the Quaker Meeting House, but luckily it could be avoided last minute.
Also one of our shamanic local activist with a crossover politics of stalinism/ trotzkyism/environmentalism made an appearance and for a change, asked relevant and helpfull questions, and did not talk off about the tram system in the Soviet Union as usual.